BUBBLES

One morning I chose to go build a great city.
My people were ready; all-set and we'd found a
flat surface on which to begin.

The builders were ready; machines set in motion;
and slowly construction began on my city.
And soon then, the first of our buildings were gracing
our small patch of land.

As years passed the city did grow and the building
site changed, as the huts put up first were knocked down, and
then larger ones put in their place that did seem more
flamboyant, seemed sculpted more intricately.

The surface was finally totally hidden, by monstrous
expanses of city. And buildings rose up to the sky and
the ghostly-eternal clear sun.

The beautiful buildings would glitter and sparkle
in glory and splendour that would never end.

And light would brake up in mysterious patterns;
bright colours would lance out and head for the gazer.
And rainbows would flit 'cross the exquisite, explicit panes.

T'were just as my workers had meant it to be.

The windows reflected the glory of all. Of
high towers, of overhead arches, and oddly
sloped pyramids sparkling like ice at dawn.

And diamond twinkles, and morning-fresh light-beams,
would sting the cold air as the warm, bluish steam rose.
The city was then in its prime...But...

As years went, so city went, same as all empires before it.
My city had started to fall. And the workforce 'came slack as
they basked in the glory that they had once built.

They sat back and revelled but time was not long.

And slowly, and softly, the city fell down but
the people no notice they took.

But I heard the sounds all around me.
And I, I could feel the decay.

The derelict snapping and cracking of worn-out
materials. Buildings were slowly but surely
collapsing. And slowly the arches would crumble,
the towers sink back, and the pyr'mids return to
the surface, from which they once rose.

The intricate structures and ornaments we had
created, they shrivelled, corroded and fell.

And then in the end, so like all times before it,
the city was conquered by others; a stronger,
and younger and hardier people, they fought with
my city's inhabitants. City's inhabitants, they had
no strength: let last frayed; the last fragile remains; let
the city, their city, our city, my city be pulled down
like overdue Christmassy things.

Those people then started to build in a different, rather
less elegant, more than a little depressed-looking way.

I watched, I was satisfied with the day's work.

It's over, I dry myself off with the transient passing
of just one more bath.